Transcending Truth

Everyone seems to be talking about Bruce Jenner and his transformation into Caitlyn Jenner, so I might as well say what I think, although I am afraid that I have already committed a micro-aggression by referring to Bruce/Caitlyn as “he”, when he, I’m sorry, she, has always been a woman, even though she has had a man’s body most of her life. I may be an incorrigible micro-aggressor who will need to be sent to the diversity camps since I posted this picture on Facebook last week.

I should explain that I do not have anything against Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner. Before this latest adventure, I barely knew he (there I go again) existed. Mr. Jenner’s choices in life are his own business. I don’t have anything in particular against the transgendered. It must be fairly unpleasant to be confused about which gender you are. I do not have any moral or religious objections to this sort of thing. My objections are based on epistemological and linguistic grounds.

We recognize and categorize objects and concepts based on the attributes we observed through our senses and the use of our reason. I know that a four-legged, furry animal that barks is a dog because it has the attributes of a dog. I know that a four-legged, furry animal that meows is not a dog but a cat, because while it shares some attributes (four legs, fur) with a dog it has an attribute, (meowing) that distinguishes it from a dog. I know that a larger four-legged animal that people ride, a two-legged animal with feathers, and a four-legged animal with scales are not dogs but a horse, a bird and a reptile because of the observed attributes that distinguish each kind of animal. All of the organisms I named have the shared attribute of being able to move about on their own. A tree cannot move on its own and since it lacks the attribute that animals share, a tree is not an animal but a plant. This is all a vast oversimplification of a subject that philosophers have debated over for centuries, but I hope you understand what I am saying.

Now, Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner does not possess any of the attributes that distinguish a woman from a man. He has not had any gender reassignment surgery, as far as I know, and even if he has, it still would not really make him into a woman. The best that the most skillful surgeon in the world can to is to give someone something of the outward appearance of the opposite sex. There is not, at present, any medical procedure that can really change someone’s gender. Yet, I feel as though I am expected to say, and believe Jenner is really a woman, despite the evidence of my senses and reason on pain of being branded a bigot and ostracized from polite society. I really do not much care for being put into a position in which I have to say something that is simply not true.

But, there is something else that bothers me about this affair. We use language in order to communicate with one another. We use words to name and classify the objects we wish to talk about. In order for this to work, we have to agree on which words go with which objects and concepts. If you call an animal that barks a dog and I call it a cat, we are likely to become confused. I cannot say that I feel that it is a cat and if you do not agree, you must be some sort of bigot, yet if I say that Bruce Jenner is actually a man because he still fits the definition of a man, I am a hater and a bigot. The idea seems to be that the words we use do not describe or reflect reality but create reality. A woman is not a person with certain attributes that indicate the female gender, but whoever happens to feel like a woman. A hairy, burly man with a long beard could declare himself a woman and we would have to agree because calling himself a woman really makes him a woman.

Surely, this is madness. If I were to state that I am really Napoleon Bonaparte, I don’t imagine that anyone would believe me since I am not a French Emperor and Napoleon has been dead for a long time. If I were to travel to Paris and demand to be reinstated to my rightful place, I don’t think the French authorities would pay much attention to me, except to send me back to America in the next plane. There would be no question in most people’s minds that I was suffering from a delusion. If I insisted that I was really a tiger and demanded surgery to reshape my body to conform to my true self, no surgeon would comply, at least not if he wanted to keep his license to practice medicine. It would be clear that I had some sort of mental illness.

His modifications were not done by an actual surgeon.And no, that isn’t a good idea.

Yet, if I started to wear women’s clothing and insisted that I was really a woman, I could, after some counseling get a surgeon to make changes not much less drastic that the obviously not entirely sane person pictured above.

This is madness. The simple truth is that there is no way to really change someone’s gender. There is no difference, in principle between the man who wants his penis cut off and the man who wants to have his arm amputated because he feels as though he is really an amputee, except that the one is clearly recognized as suffering from a mental disorder and needs help, while the other has become the latest group of people being used by the loony left to fundamentally transform this country.

Bruce Jenner is not a fruit loop. He is a man with some issues regarding his gender and he deserves our help and sympathy. It is the the people who are enabling and encouraging this sort of madness for their own reasons who are the fruit loops.